Just putting this out there, but Peter Zeihan predicts that cheap global shipping itself will falter because the US will quit the job of guaranteeing its safety. Of course, future predictions usually don't come true. But in the few years since he wrote "The End of the World Is Just the Beginning" about the end of the US-lead world order (and thus globalization), it seems like we are speed running the path he described.

Personally I think the early communists did a fine job of identifying lots of problems that are evident from observing society and its history. The problem is how easily they transitioned to imagining 'solutions' with essentially no basis in history, economics, human nature, nor anything else for that matter and then proceeded to foist them on humanity.

Realizing that "grandpa has Alzheimer's" is one thing, "so what we need to do is feed him a diet of coconut oil" is another.

Nothing you alleged was ruled against Harvard by a court or jury. But since Trump was enabled to institute the punishment first and let the justice system fight it out later (or not), there will be no due process.

The self-righteous twist at the end of your post makes me feel like you're trying to bait me into saying something 'anti-semitic,' which I won't. In fact I'm sure I would disagree with quite a few statements made at a pro-Palestine rally. Still, the matter of how much Universities are legally required to police the speech of their students is a very important one. Yet no legal progress, such as laws or rulings, came out of the Harvard situation, because due process was circumvented.

They cut lots of funding on programs that weren't connected to DEI, especially at Harvard medical:

https://www.reuters.com/legal/...

They just said, 'the new administration doesn't like your politics so we're cancelling your cancer research.'

Again, if there are any laws regarding how government research funding is disbursed, they are toothless if an administration can interpret them this broadly.

Oh, baloney. When Trump came into office he created widespread turmoil throughout academia by cancelling huge swaths of federally-funded research that had already been approved or was already ongoing. Very often this was based on nothing more than a naughty word like "equity" being in the title of the proposal.

You can say "this was all according to law" in the sense that no law was technically broken, but that only means the laws are meaningless if they don't restrict the current administration from doing whatever it wants at any time. For now, the only 'rules' for federal grants amount to some lacky trying to overperform in interpreting and carrying out the arbitrary whims of one man who will never understand or even be aware of what the programs were.

Most of what "people 20 years ago were wrong" I would chalk up to "predicting the future is hard," not lying. But Musk does lie. The name "full self driving" for one thing is a lie, and he kept saying everything would be fixed by the next version even when it was only weeks away and could not possibly fix everything.

That said, Tesla is making some progress. They have their small Robotaxi fleet in Austin, and are now increasing the number of vehicles. (From maybe 20 to 30). In Texas they do have a "safety monitor" employee onboard every car, although it has no steering wheel / pedals so they are not "driving" it per se. They have obtained a permit to operate without a safety monitor but are not operating that way yet.

So, I'm a bit less skeptical about Tesla "ever" making it than I used to be. I think only a small number of companies will make it to the finish line (NOT Stellanis - the Dodge/Ram people) but Tesla probably will be among them sooner or later.

Of course, the real leader - my a country mile - is Waymo.

But then, do you really need a VC at all?

Interesting interpretation to say that VC's are now "biased" because they're inclined to fund partnerships - just like they always were.

What has changed is an increase in the number of would-be solo entrepreneurs who shun partnership. What's causing that new bias? Maybe VC's are wary of funding Covid Kids who think they can build an empire before they have even built a team or partnership.

Or maybe their growth-driving breakthroughs were when they were young and thin and quick, but now they've become ossified with over-management and internal fiefdoms, and are trying to turn the clock back.

I think Tesla would have been a much more profitable company under Apple. Musk certainly got it to a point - over a million cars per year, and the single most popular car model, gas or electric. But more recently with cancelling the small cheap car, and the Cybertruck, and betting the company on robotaxi... Apple wouldn't have done any of that stuff. They'd be improving successive versions and not offending their customers with politics, and making Tesla a super-valuable company.

Trains are an interesting one. The US has the largest freight rail system in the world, and it is very efficient. Where I live the I-40 interstate (a major east/west roadway, essentially the modern incarnation of Route 66) is paralleled by a railway. Very often you can drive along I40 through the desert and see super-long trains stacked double-high with shipping containers, and just think how much traffic that is taking off the road. And yet, there is basically 1 lane-worth of steady tractor/trailer traffic along the freeway at all hours of the day and night - almost like a virtual never-ending train.

So here is a side-by-side railway and roadway for long-haul freight in which both are evidently viable, yet neither every pushes out the other. This seems to argue against the idea that idea that trains would naturally take over except for some cultural defect in the USA. Freight rail doesn't have to worry too much about niceties like convenience or timeliness (on the order of a few hours parked here or there) like passenger rail does, and it's not because "individualism" or small penis size or whatever people who hate cars and trucks like to blame them on. Freight is almost purely about efficiency, yet they still use trucks quite a bit.

But then do you have super-high rates when there is a shortage? A few years ago I think it was Texas there was a big "scandal" about people paying exorbitant rates for a while - because they put themselves on commercial pricing schemes that are super cheap most of the time.

Federal intransigence will have an impact, but I'd like to see a more detailed analysis of how much, because most solar development does not require federal approval. Not unless it's on federal land, or using federal funding, or some cases of environmental protection such as wetlands. So, it's unclear to me what the effect will be.

Nobody's perfect but James Cameron I would never rule out of hitting a homer. Also the fact that he is actively worrying about the plot tells me he doesn't just want to chug out a minor update of the same idea. "I could be wrong."

What are we saying, there's nothing left to imagine? I would say "Don't" too unless he does come up with something fresh. But of course it is out there. The future is (still) not a straight-line extrapolation from today.